all the curtains seemed to be drawn. She glanced down at his leg. She could see a rent in the fabric, but not much more in the cloaking darkness of the alley. She put her hand over the wound and felt the sticky warmth of blood. Still flowing, but not spurting. He wasn’t likely to pass out. She pulled up her skirt, tore a strip from her chemise, and bound it round his thigh. “Can you walk to the far end of the alley if I help you?”
“You’re in no shape to support me, Mel. Look after yourself. I’ll manage.”
“You’re a bloody awful liar, Charles. I got you this far, I can manage the rest. Put your arm across my shoulders.”
He had the sense not to protest further. He walked, after a fashion, with his arm across her shoulders and hers about his waist and his right leg dragging awkwardly. Her side didn’t seem to hurt as much as it had before. Perhaps the chill of the rain and wind was making her numb all over.
They passed the closed side door of the Gilded Lily and made their way agonizing step by step to the far end of the alley and the next street over. She got Charles into the shelter of the first doorway and scanned the street. No carriages. A cluster of brothels or taverns or gin mills to the right. The lights of what might be a lodging house to the left. A few women with shawls thrown over their low-cut gowns, leaning in darkened shop doorways, looking for custom despite the weather. A trio of boys trying to roast potatoes over a smoldering fire in a doorway on the opposite side of the street.
“Wait here,” she said to Charles, and darted across the street before he could protest.
The boys looked up at her approach, wariness writ in their expressions. Mercifully, she had managed to hang onto her reticule. She fished out three half crowns. “One for each of you, and another for the first one who can bring me a hackney.”
The boys stared at her for a moment in the light of their fire. Then all three grabbed the coins and were off like a shot.
“They may use the money to buy themselves a place by a warm fire instead of looking for a hackney,” Charles said when she rejoined him. He was breathing erratically between the words.
“They’ll come back. They’re old enough to know that two half crowns can buy a lot more than one.” She leaned against him for warmth, though they were both so frozen she doubted it would make any difference. Tremors wracked his body, but he wrapped his arms round her and rubbed her shoulders.
After an interval that was probably only ten minutes, though it felt like thirty, she was proved right. A mud- spattered hackney came trundling down the street with the smallest of the three boys running beside it. When she and Charles stepped out of the doorway, battered and bedraggled, the driver nearly took off again, but he stopped when she waved a pound note in his face. “Berkeley Square. As quickly as possible.”
Charles made a protesting sound. “We have to have someone look at your leg,” she said. “Besides, we can’t hope to find Jemmy Moore until past midnight. And we should see if Addison and Blanca learned anything.” She half pushed him into the carriage with the help of the young boy who had found the hackney. She pressed another pound note into the boy’s hand, climbed into the carriage after Charles, pulled the door shut behind her, and collapsed on the dry seat.
“Has your wound started bleeding again?” Charles said from the opposite end of the seat.
“I can’t tell. It doesn’t hurt too badly.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it could have been a great deal worse. “Do you think the bullet broke a bone in your leg?”
“No.”
She shot him a sideways glance. She couldn’t make out his features in the dark, but his breathing sounded even more labored than before. “You’d say that anyway. I don’t know why I bother asking.” She folded her arms and realized she was shaking. Cold or delayed fear, she couldn’t say which. Her gown was plastered to her skin and she thought her half-boots were soaked through, though she couldn’t quite feel her toes. “If Victor Velasquez is Iago Lorano, how do you think he found us? I’d have sworn no one followed us from the Marshalsea. I thought we could trust Hugo Trevennen not to talk.”
“Perhaps someone else at the Marshalsea told Velasquez about Susan. She visits her uncle. She must be known there.”
She rubbed her arms. The trembling wouldn’t stop. “Victor Velasquez is no fool, but he’s a soldier turned diplomat, not an intelligence agent. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the skills to organize all these attacks so quickly.”
“Quite. Which is why I still wonder if O’Roarke’s behind the attacks.”
“Charles, I told you Raoul wouldn’t—”
“Attack
She managed a laugh. “My darling Charles, if Raoul wanted me back, he wouldn’t let anything as conventional as a marriage tie stand in his way. He also knows me well enough to realize he wouldn’t have a prayer of getting me without my cooperation. Besides, Raoul rarely wastes energy on anything as mundane as personal relationships.”
She felt Charles’s gaze on her in the gloom of the carriage, hard and direct. “Mel, I may be blind to a lot of things, but it’s obvious that the man’s still in love with you.”
She jerked and stared at him, but she could only make out the outline of his profile. “Don’t be stupid, Charles. If Raoul’s ever been in love, it wasn’t with me. He keeps a lock of some woman’s hair in a fob on his watch chain. But it’s certainly not mine—he had it before I met him and anyway it’s blond. That’s the closest I’ve ever seen him come to showing any sentimentality.”
Charles made no reply and said nothing further until they pulled up in Berkeley Square. The sight of the twin filigree lampposts spilling light onto their own portico was a blessed relief. She paid off the driver and helped Charles up the steps, arms shaking, half-boots squelching on the stone. The second footman, Michael, opened the door in answer to her ring, stared open-mouthed for an instant, then made haste to take Charles’s weight from her shoulder.
“Thank you, Michael.” She stepped into the welcome warmth of the entrance hall, dripping rainwater all over the black-and-white marble of the tiles. Her legs seemed to have turned to jelly. She gripped the console table for a moment. “Is Captain Fraser here?”
“Yes, madam, he’s in the library.”
“Good. Help Mr. Fraser in there. Then go to Dr. Blackwell in Hill Street. If he’s out for the evening, find where he’s gone and go after him. Tell him I’m sorry to disturb him, but Mr. Fraser’s been shot and it’s an emergency.” Geoffrey Blackwell could be trusted to come quickly. He was an old friend, and his wife was Charles’s cousin.
Melanie ran ahead to open the library doors. Inside she found not only Edgar but the children’s governess, Laura Dudley. Edgar was pacing before the fireplace, while Laura sat bolt upright in a chair, twisting something that looked like it had once been a piece of mending in her hands.
“Melanie.” Edgar came toward her. “I was starting to worry—Good God.” He caught sight of Michael staggering under Charles’s weight and ran to their side.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Charles’s voice was remarkably steady, but now that they were inside Melanie could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Give me your arm, brother, so Michael can be off on his mercy mission.”
“Warm water and clean cloths,” Melanie said to Laura. “And blankets and a dressing gown. Are Addison and Blanca back?”
“Blanca is. She didn’t learn anything. She’s in the nursery with Jessica. Addison’s still out.” Laura hurried from the room without further questions. Edgar helped Charles to a high-backed chair in front of the fire.
Melanie dropped down beside him, unknotted the strip of linen—which took longer than it should have because her chilled fingers wouldn’t cooperate—and got her first proper look at the wound. The bullet had entered the fleshy part of his thigh, thank God. He was probably right that no bones were broken. The wound was still bleeding, but not profusely. “Geoffrey will have to dig the bullet out, but I can clean it,” she said. “Can you manage to get your trousers off or shall we cut them away?”
“I can manage if Edgar helps with my boots.” His rib cage shook with each breath. “Intercept Laura and bring me my dressing gown.”
Melanie met Laura at the door and took the things from her. Between them, she and Edgar got Charles wrapped in the dressing gown. She cleaned the wound as best she could while Charles sipped from a large glass of whisky Edgar had pressed into his hand. Laura hovered in the background, managing to be near when necessary yet
